He recites Kant while playing the theme from Match of the Day; he impersonates a hillbilly while strumming a Persian oud. Bill Bailey’s talent for blending intellectual whimsy with traditional belly laughs never palls. You can even forgive him for trying to get some mileage out of jokes about George W. Bush.

Wandering around the stage in his usual state of genial befuddlement, a patch of roadie hair seemingly pasted on to the back of his balding pate, he has brought his show Tinselworm to the West End for one last outing. Eddie Izzard is playing just a few doors away, but there’s no danger that Bailey will be lost in the shadows.

Considering how brightly his star now shines, there is still an aura of unworldliness about him. It is easy to imagine him being locked in his garden shed for hours on end with only a set of keyboards for company. A throwback to the hippy generation, he builds the evening around a series of circular meditations of the kind that undergraduates are prone to indulge in after one herbal cigarette too many. In Bailey’s case, though, the ramblings are intricately choreographed.

There are only the occasional lapses. The digs at parochial Americans are a little tired and Jade Goody is no longer quite such a figure of fun. Compared with the heights he was reaching five or six years ago, Bailey’s stream of consciousness sounds less spontaneous. But then, he has set the bar at an extraordinarily high level.

His gentle demeanour gives way only once or twice. There is the hint of a snarl in his voice when he mentions his decision to leave Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Singing along with all those indie rockers seems to have tried his patience. Elsewhere, an unexpected riff on the dubious connections between a certain Swiss bank and the Third Reich allows a glimpse of Bailey as the laughing person’s answer to Naomi Klein.

Some brief, absurdist film clips are cleverly integrated into the script, and the musical interludes are full of characteristic verbal flourishes. James Blunt and Lionel Richie make soft targets, perhaps, but only Bailey would attempt to turn the notorious “devil’s chord” into a doorbell chime.

Box office 020-7494 5065. To Dec 22 2008

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